connect with us

Parakeet: A Just-In-Time Parallel Accelerator for Python

Alex Rubinsteyn, Eric Hielscher, Nathaniel Weinman, and Dennis Shasha, New York University

Abstract:

High level productivity languages such as Python or Matlab enable the use of computational resources by nonexpert programmers. However, these languages often sacriﬁce program speed for ease of use.

This paper proposes Parakeet, a library which provides a just-in-time (JIT) parallel accelerator for Python. Parakeet bridges the gap between the usability of Python and the speed of code written in efﬁciency languages such as C++ or CUDA. Parakeet accelerates data-parallel sections of Python that use the standard NumPy scientiﬁc computing library. Parakeet JIT compiles efﬁcient versions of Python functions and automatically manages their execution on both GPUs and CPUs. We assess Parakeet on a pair of benchmarks and achieve signiﬁcant speedups.

Open Access Media

USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.